He had, presumably, seen dead things before — the livestock deaths that are an inescapable part of farming, the animals that don’t survive the winter, the bodies that need to be dealt with in the unsentimental way of people whose livelihoods depend on understanding death as a practical matter.

He picked up a body that looked, felt, and by every reasonable measure was dead.

He put it in his truck.

He drove thirty minutes in winter conditions to a hospital.

Why?

We don’t know, because Wally Nelson’s internal experience of that drive is not documented in the sources that have recorded this story.

Did he believe she might still be alive?

Did he simply believe that the proper place to confirm death was a medical facility?